


the twisted nerve

by trell (qunlat)



Category: Elementary (TV), One Piece
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Canon Trans Character, Gen, Mentions of Cancer, Nonbinary Character, Past Abuse, Past Drug Addiction, Past Relationship(s), Past Violence, Terminal Illnesses, Trans Character, Trans Issues, Trauma, WIP Amnesty
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2015-01-29
Updated: 2015-01-29
Packaged: 2018-03-09 13:18:50
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 7,203
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/3251144
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/qunlat/pseuds/trell
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>
  <i>There is not, in your eyes, more to say. Hearing another doctor say it changes nothing, only puts another nail in the coffin: you’d lied to yourself at first but you’re long past that, not with your hand shaking from the slightest motion, not with all sensation in your fingers gone.</i>
</p>
            </blockquote>





	the twisted nerve

**Author's Note:**

> (WIP Amnesty.)

You show up at their door with one arm broken and the other covered in track marks, the rest of you in scars or bruises in turn.

The girl that opens the door is all leather and boots, and the look of alarm that crosses her face isn’t one of fear. “Hang on,” she says, before you can say anything at all, try to explain your presence or your state or the fact that if this is the wrong door you’re certain you’ll wind up lying in a gutter right up until the ones you’re running from find you. 

She turns, and she hollers over her shoulder, “Sherlock!” and the relief you feel at knowing you’re in the right place combined with days of violent exhaustion turn out to be enough to level you, anyway: it’s all you can do to not crumple onto the woman that opened the door.

The last thing you see as sparks and black take you down on the brownstone steps is two shapes rushing towards the door, and two voices saying _Sherlock_ : and this might be a fool’s hope but you’re here, you’ve found him, and that, at least, is something.

*

You wake up on a couch to the murmur of voices. When you’re as sure as you can be that no one’s looking you sneak a glance and see that you’re in a cluttered room filled with bookshelves and papers _three exits, two doors and a window, a sharp fire iron by the fireplace_ and the trio you hadn’t quite met at the door are in the next room, leaning around a kitchen table.

Eyes closed, you listen hard. Sherlock is loud enough to be heard easily; the voice of the other woman—not the one that greeted you at the door—is rapid and quiet. “You know he can’t be here,” she’s saying, “I could see the marks on his arm while we carried him in, and moreover he obviously needs a hospital—”

“Don’t you think,” says the woman that opened the door, “that if he’d felt safe going to a hospital, he’d have done that instead of dragging _here?_ ”

“He’s not using anymore, Watson,” says Sherlock, all tightly-wound irritation. “You can see it clear as day, I know you can. He’s staying.”

“A halfway house for strays,” drawls leather-and-boots, and the third woman—Watson?—makes a faint sound of exasperation.

“I’m just concerned,” she says, “that you’re letting in someone that’s not safe for you, and that his staying here isn’t safe for him. Regardless of whether he wants to go to a hospital, the bruises I saw alone need to be looked at and then immediately reported to the police.” 

“Now _that,_ ” says Sherlock, and his voice goes very soft and very dark, just then, “would be unsafe for him.”

Leather-and-boots says, “You can’t say things like that and just expect us to accept it.”

“I’m asking both of you to trust me in this regard,” says Sherlock, and you can hear him tap his fingers against the surface of the table right where he stands. “There’s a man I owe a great deal, and _that_ man out there, the one presently no longer unconscious on our couch,” you almost jolt with surprise but manage to swallow it, keep your eyes closed against the bait, “is his adoptive son, do you understand?”

“This man,” Watson says, quietly, “is he—”

“Dead,” says Sherlock, “very,” and, “as a doornail. Which should, perhaps, erase any sense of indebtment on my part.”

“And yet here you are,” says leather-and-boots.

“And yet here I am,” agrees Sherlock, and then there’s the sound of footsteps ringing across the wood floor towards you, and when he speaks again it’s much closer: “Please do us a favor, Mister Law, and stop trying to pretend you’re asleep or unconscious when it’s clear to anyone who’s seen enough of both states to know that you’re neither.”

Watson and leather-and-boots are just stepping into the room when you finally open your eyes, and the sight of all three of them standing over you is more than a little unnerving. You sit up carefully, the badly-healed stitches in your side and the deep-set bruises in your back protesting every move, and you say: “He said,” and Sherlock, at least, knows well enough who you mean, “he said to go to you. That if there wasn’t anything left, I could go to you.”

“Given that you already most certainly have,” says Sherlock, “debating it further would be purposeless, even were I not obligated to let you in.” At the flick of your gaze to Watson and leather-and-boots, he adds, “My colleague and my protegée, Watson and Kitty, respectively.”

All you can manage is a nod, which seems to be enough, for Watson says immediately, “I’d like to take a better look at your injuries. I’m a doctor.”

You can’t help but bark a laugh at that, though it comes out more of a heaving sort of cough. “So am I,” and you need them to trust you, you need to be as certain as you can _not at all_ that this woman won’t mention you to the police behind Sherlock’s back but it makes your skin _crawl_ to think of being examined (worse still, of having her know all the things that you work so hard to hide). “I won’t bleed out overnight, if that’s what you’re worried about. And like Sherlock said,” and you swallow the details, the excuses, “I’m not using anymore.”

You can’t read the emotion that flicks over Watson’s face (you can’t read the emotions on most people’s faces; it’s hardly a surprise), but she doesn’t push further. “All right,” she says, “but if you would let me look you over another time, I think that would be best.”

“And I don’t,” you snap, and instantly regret it; you need to be on their good side, to present as something other than the unhinged antagonist intruding on Sherlock’s home, even if that’s all that you really are. Watson frowns but doesn’t answer, and you can only imagine the conversations they’ll have when you’re not there.

Sherlock breaks the stretching silence with, “Kitty, could you show him to the spare room.”

“Yeah,” says Kitty, and nods out one of the room’s doors, towards the stairs. “There’s a spare mattress up there, if you can stand up long enough to get to it. Beats the couch.”

“I can stand,” you say.

*

Your exhaustion doesn’t make it any easier to sleep, and once Kitty’s tossed you extra blankets and closed the door into the little room at the top of the stairs all you do for what feels like hours is look between the door and the window and the outer wall, thinking of monsters in the dark and the alleyway outside.

Every slip of consciousness makes your eyes snap right back open, your body protesting the fatigue. Every sound from the lower floor makes your fingers twitch towards the knife tucked against your ankle. Every slight indication of movement outside makes you freeze.

The yowl of a feral cat outside has you up and on your feet, swaying, knife in hand, and it’s a long time until you can convince yourself to lie down again, like pulling teeth. 

When unconsciousness finally comes you would have expected nightmares brushing the surface of wakefulness, false agonies to join the very real aches and stabs of pain throughout all your body. That you get something else is—either a sign from god (and you do not believe in god) or a different type of torture altogether.

_you see eir smile from underneath a brim of straw, bright in eir sun-dark face;_  
_and it makes you shiver when eir calloused hands touch your skin but you_  
_don’t evade eir careless sloppy kiss, smile like a fool when you feel the scar_  
_on eir cheekbone brush against your face, kiss em back with even less finesse_

_ey says, “do you want to come with me?” and you say “i can’t,”_  
_horribly sobered, there’s too much after you, there’s too much chaining you_  
_to things you fear exposing em to more than you fear anything—_

_you kiss em again instead of speaking, your beautiful brazilian (not a boy)_  
_with a smile like sunshine: try to tell em that ey’s done no wrong,_  
_that you’d go with em, that you’re scared_  
_if ey asked again you would say_  
_yes, yes,_ yes, please

When you jolt awake in the darkness from visions of em it’s all you can do to catch your breath again. In the early hours and the New York cold biting at your edges you squeeze your eyes shut and you press your free hand over your mouth and shudder silently through the tears; and after long enough, when you breathe again and the pain in your chest settles to its norm, you sleep dreamlessly at last.

*

“Someone’s beat him,” Kitty says, the moment they’re sure that Law is upstairs and out of earshot. “Badly. Sherlock, you can’t ignore that, any more than you could ignore how you’d found me.” She can see Joan frowning in agreement.

Having Joan in the room is like being near solidity and calm incarnate, she thinks; or maybe it just seems that way, juxtaposed to Sherlock’s nervous energy. 

“I’d wager someone’s done a lot more than that, to leave the man so ragged,” he says, tersely. His hands are tense over the table, fingers drumming against the surface even as he bounces his knees. Kitty’s been around him long enough to not be surprised when he jumps unexpectedly out of his chair and strides like a twanging guitar string to his wall of locks; keeping his hands busy, occupying, as he says, the free space of the working mind. 

“You said you knew his father,” Joan says. “Well enough to house his son when he’s, what, on the run from the law—?”

“His adoptive father,” says Sherlock, and, “More likely, an international crime syndicate.”

“You’re joking,” Joan says, “please tell me you’re joking, Sherlock, because you can’t pretend sheltering a runaway from, what, a mafia? is safe for anyone involved.”

“They won’t come here,” Sherlock says. “They don’t operate in the States. Unless he’s a fool, he’s left no paper trail, _and_ , unless we force him to enter legal channels in a way that documents his,” a jerking wave of Sherlock’s hand in the air, “ _extensive_ injuries, he’s hardly likely to be found.”

“And how long can an undocumented man possibly remain here,” sighs Joan. “No identification means no job, and, worse, his appearance—”

Kitty has been thinking the same: the vitiligo over the man’s face and hands had been stark, bright in the light of the door when she’d opened it to find the man outside.

“Watson,” says Sherlock, “have you ever, in working with me, found the need to provide documentation for compensation of your services.”

Now it’s Kitty’s turn to interject. “You mean to train him like you’re training me?”

“Absolutely not,” says Sherlock, and, at Kitty’s expression: “But that doesn’t mean we can’t put him to use while we work our cases, once his injuries have bettered. Perhaps it would be good for him.”

“What would be good for him,” says Joan, “is medical and psychological help, Sherlock, and if you’re telling me he can’t get that, then it puts that responsibility on your shoulders—and, inadvertently, on mine—and neither of us are fit to serve as, as counselors for a victim of a crime syndicate.”

“I intend to do what I can,” Sherlock says, firmly, louder than before, “to ensure that he will be able to be here, legally, without fear of reprisal, and once that is the case I will, of course, encourage him to seek help from the proper sources. But it will very obviously take _time_ , Watson, and until then providing a refuge is hardly a great strain upon my resources, particularly with Kitty’s assistance.”

“He did it for me,” Kitty says. “It worked, didn’t it? I’m here, I’m better.”

There’s a moment of silence, Sherlock picking a lock and Joan looking like she’d like to say something more: but then she says only, “All right,” and, “call me if—if anything happens. I’ve got to get home.”

“Of course you do,” says Sherlock, in the way of his where Kitty’s not sure if it’s meant to be a mere statement of fact or a subtle accusation. “And should mobsters break into my home I’ll be sure to notify Marcus.”

That Joan doesn’t roll her eyes, Kitty thinks, is a testament to the gravity of the situation.

*

For the first time in what must be months you wake to sunlight on your face and something more than tattered jackets around you, and for thirty chilling seconds you can’t remember where you are.

By the time you stumble down the stairs some twenty minutes later _no toothbrush but enough mouthwash to kill a horse, better than you were_ you’re no longer so far from reality, but something about it still remains surreal: the sounds of cooking in the kitchen and the woman from the previous night, leather and boots yet again— _Kitty_ , that’s right—wrestling a stereo onto a chair in the big room.

You manage to stand ghostlike at the bottom of the stairs for some time before she says (entirely without looking up), “Breakfast’s in the kitchen, I’m just trying to extract cooperation from the tortoise.”

You don’t ask.

There’s a trepidation associated with entering the kitchen, because now you have to face Sherlock with something more than _let me crash for the night_ , now you have to try and explain your presence and find out what he thinks, beyond what you heard; Rocinante’s good graces have got you this far but how far they’ll get you in all—

“Mister Law,” says Sherlock, cutting short your attempts to buy time in the doorway, “you are neither a ghost nor an impostor in this house, and if you must express your awkward gratitude, I would rather you do so in a way that doesn’t involve haunting the entryways.”

“How long,” you ask, too blunt because it’s the premier question in your mind, “how long will you let me stay here?”

“As long as you need,” says Sherlock, but when you open your mouth he continues (all without looking up from whatever it is he’s concocting on the stove—you’re no longer sure whether this is the aforementioned breakfast or something else entirely), “ _with_ the caveat that you will not interfere with my work, or do anything stupid to get yourself noticed by the authorities, such as—” 

And there it is; of course. The vague handwave towards where you’ve got your left arm curled towards your body, hiding the track marks from view but not, of course, from mind; and you grit your teeth and you say, “I’m _clean_ ,” and, “you said as much to your colleague, last night, but you’ll question it now? I’m not—it’s been a long time.”

“As it has for me,” says Sherlock, and when he meets your gaze his own is dark and serious, enough to stop you from retorting further. “And yet, as they will tell you in many a group meeting, it only takes once to break a streak of any length.” 

The fury appears in you unwarned, _you weren’t there, it isn’t trivial_. You growl, “I was injecting opiates against pain, not for—not for _fun_ ,” derisive.

You realize as soon as you’ve said that you’ve stepped wrong: realize how accusatory your words are, how much a foul thing that is to say to another ex-addict, how little room you have to judge. This man, of all people, doesn’t deserve to hear something like that. “Shit,” you say, even as Sherlock’s frown deepens, your heart dropping in fear of immediate eviction as much as out of the wash of guilt, “that wasn’t how I meant—”

“Yes, it was,” says Sherlock, sharply, and reaches over quickly to turn off the stove and move the pan. “That was exactly how you meant it, but no, I don’t intend to throw you out into the street for an out-of-line remark. Do you accept my terms?”

“Yes,” you say, half out-of-breath, “yes, of course.”

“Good,” he says. In the little you’ve seen of him, he already lives up to everything that Rocinante told you; _takes no shit_ and _kinder than he looks_ , and when he hands you a plate of mysteriously-tinted scrambled eggs, the latter rings all the more true.

*

For the first few days their new houseguest hardly leaves the room he’s been allotted, save to sit on the stairs when the television is on in the main room running the news as a radar for new cases.

He looks _bad_ , Kitty thinks—she’d said to Joan, some weeks before, that when Sherlock had found her she’d been poorly, and this man looks just like that: like he’s coming apart at the seams, like he’s been running himself ragged (as she had been; hiding from dangers past as well as dangers present, expecting demons in the shadows.)

When he comes down for food, irregularly, like he’s forgotten he needs it, she thinks he looks like someone who no longer knows how to exist in his own skin. Like it hurts to move, too.

He still refuses being looked over, and that’s familiar as much as the rest. Kitty refuses to pity him—refuses to make him victim, when she’s never felt one herself—but she knows what it’s like, pain and fear of exams and tests, and she wishes she could tell him something that would help.

Alas, only time and throwing away all of her past have ever helped: choosing a new path and running from home, running with Sherlock, building someone new to be when all of who she’d been was gone. She’s still building; sometimes slipping, but the bricks are lain—not whole yet but more than just the skeleton of something still to come.

Even when she’d been just that, that was still progress.

Whether there’s more to Law’s fear she isn’t sure, and even with everything Sherlock’s taught her she can’t read someone so reclused so well.

When she asks Sherlock whether he intends to do something about Law, he says only, “What makes you think I haven’t,” but he’s neck-deep in file boxes and she doesn’t get to ask him any further; _case-mode_ , she thinks, and throws on a leather jacket to go out, instead.

*

When you were little you used to have a hard time keeping track of dates: birthdays, deadlines, everything—days of the week always stuck better than the numbers on the wall.

You have no such weakness now, and it’s the impact of necessity:

every three weeks,

one shot

or else.

Right now, there are few things you can think of that would be worse than hot flashes and bone loss and the onset of what amounts to another illness; right now you’re also out of T, and that scares the hell out of you like little else (and all of you is fear, every day, every minute, wound up, wound tight, never quite alert enough: so that this is worse is perhaps indicative enough.)

You check your tattered bag (in it are three shirts, spare jeans, the case from all the previous doses, the syringe and disinfectant, a spare toothbrush from Kitty) over and over as the time approaches, as if checking again will make it magically appear. As if there’s any chance that you miscounted, that you’ve got another dose hidden somewhere in your things, despite the fact that you’ve kept perfect track.

You should tell Sherlock. You know this: he’s the only reason that you’re here, the only reason that you are (briefly, incompletely) safe. At the very least he’s the reason you’ve a roof over your head, him and whatever his past with Rocinante; but you don’t want him to know, not anymore than you’d wanted Watson to.

From the day you arrive you keep almost entirely to your room, and as the first week passes you grow more and more agitated: five days, three days, one.

Salvation—wholly unexpected—comes in a form that is more unexpected still: a woman introduced only as Ms. Hudson, muse and and Sherlock’s long-time friend.

You’re on your way down the stairs when the doorbell rings through the house, and you freeze where you are because you don’t know whether you should bolt up the stairs in case it’s someone you know, in case they’ve _found you_ or whether you should try and answer the door, make yourself useful. 

You can believe that they’d kill you right in broad daylight. You can believe they do it right here, without hesitation.

Your hesitation provides enough time for Sherlock to come bustling out of the large room downstairs and into the foyer. When he’s opened the door Ms. Hudson strides in like a countess out of a storybook, albeit with an elegant bag over her shoulder and a wheeled valise; you find yourself stuck on the stairs as Sherlock closes the door behind her and they exchange greetings, and then Sherlock looks to you and says, “This is Miss Hudson, a good friend and a frankly brilliant autodidact that has on multiple occasions consulted for me on ancient Greek. She’ll be staying with us briefly. Miss Hudson, in turn, this is . . .”

That he does you the courtesy of leaving it open, not saying your name to someone that’s an absolute stranger, you appreciate that. Still, you find it in you to murmur—awkwardly trapped on the stairs that you are, in washed-out clothes and your arm in a sling, half-leaning against the bannister—“Law,” and, “just Law, Miss Hudson. I’m . . . staying, too.”

“Feel free to get acquainted,” says Sherlock, and vanishes to do whatever it is he usually does; pore over case files, arrange dummies on levers (as you discovered yesterday when you came down for water), talk excitedly over video call with Watson for hours on end. Kitty is usually involved in the same: when she’s not, she seems mostly out of the house, and you don’t know what it is that she does in her spare time.

You manage to shake Ms. Hudson’s hand without wincing; touch is still something unfortunate, best avoided.

She smiles brightly at you over the handshake, and tosses her long hair over her shoulder. Thrown, all you can think is that she radiates _caregiver_ ; the sort of person that would sit a stranger down with coffee and listen to every problem they’ve ever had.

That Sherlock is friends someone like this almost doesn’t make sense, for every other colleague of his that you’ve met has been far less gentle; Watson, as persistent as Sherlock himself, and Kitty, who (you have learned) has been continually electrocuting the tortoise.

And perhaps, after this, it shouldn’t surprise you when that evening you end up seated in the empty kitchen across from her, Ms. Hudson drinking tea and you merely staring into your own. From the moment she slides you the mug you keep the palm of your free hand pressed to its side, even though it’s too hot to hold.

“White Darjeeling,” says Ms. Hudson, and jolts you out of your mindless lull as the mug burns at your hand. “Good for moving the thoughts around.”

“Is it,” you say. You don’t look up from the tea: you can’t bring yourself to drink it (bitter and underfed have never mixed well) but some of the leaves haven’t yet settled from being swirled, and it’s better than looking at her. You hardly have: you find it hard to look at anyone, these days, gaze straying, dropping any time you’re not snarling in anger. 

“Yes,” she says, and, “darling, you look like your thoughts could use moving around.”

You would like your thoughts gone, you think; your memories, all the looping terrors and the words and phrases that drift up out of the internal mire when you’re left too much time to think. Your mind, you’ve come to believe, is a graveyard, or perhaps a glutton: eating away at itself with every moment, more broken than you’d care to admit.

Last night you checked your bag for the dose of T you knew wasn’t there and you dreamed again of _em_ , strawhat and smile and all. You’ll never see em again, of that much you’re certain: you’ve no way to find em and ey no way to find you, and when you left you told em not to go looking.

Ey’d never listened to you, not from the moment you knew em, but you told em too that it was over and that you wouldn’t be there. That you didn’t love em; that you never had.

You can’t decide which nightmares are worse, the ones where you break eir heart over and over or the ones that remind you, again and again, of all the reasons you’re hiding and running. The not-yet healed aches in your back and the poorly-healed scars at your stomach remind you, too, and so does your near-useless arm in its sling, your shaking hands and vision that’s too often clouded.

“Darling,” says Ms. Hudson, gently, just drawing your attention again; not bothered, not accusatory, only a pull back into the present. “You can tell me about whatever it is, you know. There’s no one _I’d_ tell—ask Sherlock. I’ve never told him a word of the men with whom I’ve spent time as their muse.”

“I hope you aren’t attempting to become mine,” you say. You mean it to be a throwaway comment, but your shoulders still tense, and you press the pads of your fingers against the hot mug until the sting sings through them, makes your entire hand ache.

“Unless you’re a novelist suffering from writer’s block,” Ms. Hudson says, “or perhaps an artist caught by frustration in the middle of painting your magnum opus, I don’t think that would work out very well for you or for me.”

You glance up at her for the first time, and—

—and find yourself struck by the most minor of details, a bump at the base of her throat that you didn’t expect: one that you’ve never had, even despite being on T, and—

“I’m out,” you blurt, weeks of anxieties into the clear, stumbling over the words, not meaning to spill everything now nor to her but unable to stop—you’ve found someone that _knows_ , someone that has to understand, someone who’s maybe been through the same, “I’m out of T, it’s been three weeks since my last shot and I’m out of doses and I have really bad reactions to going cold turkey, I don’t have a doctor here and I don’t know who I could tell and I’m out, I—”

You come to a stop less because you intend to and more because you’re suddenly shaking all over, and it hasn’t been this bad in weeks, this nonsensical combination of shock and overstimulation: and you know it must have something to do with what’s happened to you in past months, you know it’s just miscommunication between body and brain, and you hate it still, all of it, this _rebellion._

You shove away your mug of tea, sloshing it over the table, and you grip the wooden edge, try to keep your teeth from chattering as loudly as they feel: and it’s hard to breathe, and Ms. Hudson’s up on her feet in an instant and walking towards you, pressing a hand to your shoulder—

“Don’t!” you bark, and jump to your feet and jerk away, stumble. Some part of your brain tells you you’re being a fool, overreacting, but the rest of you only tells you to run even as it won’t let you; and when you trip back against the fridge and sink against it, curl in on yourself in your stupid fear, Ms. Hudson’s level voice is all that draws you back.

“I can help you, darling. I understand, and I’m so sorry.” She doesn’t touch you again, crouches nearby; and everything inside you wars between humiliation and wariness, overlain most of all with how much you want this to stop. “I can help you get what you need, all right?”

Everything in you wants to refuse, for all that you asked, for all that you need: you’ve given this woman too much leverage already, you don’t dare—

Your sense of self-preservation, so finely honed, saves you: breaks through the layers of terror, evaluates one danger over another and comes out on top with _this._

Pressed against the door of the fridge and the edge of the counter, shuddering, you say, “Yes.”

*

“He’s using,” says Kitty, leaning over Sherlock’s shoulder as he watches three different people work on six different screens, seated in the middle of the computer room like it’s his throne room (Sherlock, she suspects, would not appreciate the comparison: despite their work for MI6, he’s never been keen on the ‘queen’ part of ‘queen and country’.)

Without looking up, Sherlock says, “He is not.”

“Do I need to show you the needles?” asks Kitty, and crosses her arms. “Because he has them—has the one, anyway. Why does someone with their arm covered in track marks as far as the eye can see have a needle except to—?”

“Kitty,” snaps Sherlock, eyes still fixed intently on one of the six screens, “apply an inkling of good sense, reconsider that statement, and please, above all, do it somewhere that is not _here_.”

“He hasn’t left upstairs in three days,” Kitty drives on, undeterred, because sometimes that’s the only way to talk to him at all: “How d’you know he’s not on the nod?”

“ _There are more things in heaven and earth, Horatio_ ,” Sherlock intones, and waves her away. Kitty only shakes her head and tramps out, slapping the palm of her hand against the doorframe on the way.

*

Ms. Hudson procures a four-dose supply of T for you.

You have no idea how she managed to get it, or what kind of strings she had to pull, or how she could afford to do so, but you’re more grateful and relieved than words can possibly express: with nothing to offer in return you hardly know what to say at all, but she waves off your mumbled attempt at gratitude with a smile. “Sticking together,” she says, and all you can do is nod.

Another week passes. You hardly leave the room at the top of the stairs: immediate problem solved there’s little reason to make yourself known, and since your conversation with Sherlock on the first day you’ve been intent on staying out of his way since you can’t be of use (and you can’t be, you can’t.)

Worse, you’re still afraid to so much as step outside the brownstone’s walls. The sense of safety that you have here is foolish, you know that more than anyone, but with Sherlock and Watson in it it feels like a refuge, far safer than anywhere you’ve been in a very long time. 

Your arm is healing, when you inspect it. It isn’t healing well. 

The tense boredom of your self-imposed incarceration is a familiar one. Listlessness interspersed with patchy, jumpy sleep; it reminds you intensely of being on-call. 

(It reminds you, too, of hospital beds months at a time; monitors beeping while you itched to get up, get out, felt certain you would never again do either. That memory you’re even less willing to indulge.)

Being on-call, though, that was just like this; trapped between the need for instant alertness and the need for sleep, always waiting for someone to return from the job covered in blood and their eyes rolling wild. Months of your life are an unparseable haze in your memory, but you remember every surgery you carried out in near-perfect detail: the cuts you made, the bullet fragments extracted and dropped in the tin, what you barked at your imperfect assistants. Who you saved, who you didn’t.

(Rocinante had asked you once whether you liked the job; you’d told him it was your parents would have wanted, or near enough—they’d always wanted you to be a doctor.

 _Not for him_ , was all that Rocinante had said in response, and all you’d done was thin your lips and turn back to what you’d been doing; you’d still had your idiotic, misplaced loyalty, back then.)

You think of holding scalpels, and every time you do you inspect your damaged arm again. Your fingers don’t respond the way they used to, and moving the hand itself reduces it to shaking and sends sparks of agony up through your shoulder.

You wish daily that you could manage clenching it into a fist, just once. You’d put it through a wall.

*

Watson is there on one of the few mornings during which you set foot downstairs, and she corners you with, “Listen, I understand that you don’t want to be examined—”

“No,” you override immediately, “I don’t,” even as you go for the stash of awful instant coffee that’s been pointed out to you by Kitty. 

“ _But_ ,” continues Watson, “I’d like to take a look at your arm, and whatever’s causing you pain in your side. Just,” she puts her hands up, defensive, when you turn to her with a glower, “just those two things. I’m not trying to invade your privacy, I’m just concerned as a doctor—you should know what that’s like, right?”

“I was a surgeon.” You wrestle with teapot and coffee one-handed, close the drawer. 

“As was I,” says Watson, and that, at last, puts a stopper on your ire. You make yourself breathe out, fill the teapot from the tap and set it on the stove: and then, once you’ve turned on the burner, you say,

“Fine. You can look at my arm,” she takes a step forward, and you hurry on to say, “just my arm.”

“I’ll take it,” says Watson, and beckons you over to the table. 

You expect her to realize quickly, the moment she asks you to make simple motions, and she does, horrified. “This isn’t just a break, this is—”

She takes off your sling, then, propping your arm very carefully against the table; and this time, going through the motions of the check, she doesn’t say anything at all, shocked into silence.

The teapot shrieks on the stove.

Watson walks over and takes the teapot off without a word, pours the boiling water into the mug you’d readied. (It grates infinitely that you can’t get the sling on easily enough to get it done yourself.) When she comes back she sets the mug down in front of you, sits, and—with an evenness that you can tell is forced—says, “Who did that to you?”

Your smile is exceedingly thin and not at all sincere. “The man I worked for.” 

Watson’s frown is deep. “You know what I’m going to say next,” she says, and you incline your head, bland. “You have serious nerve damage.”

Unthinking, you press the hand that works against the mug she’s brought you, keep your palm there until you can imagine peeling skin. “Yes.”

There is not, in your eyes, more to say. Hearing another doctor say it changes nothing, only puts another nail in the coffin: you’d lied to yourself at first but you’re long past that, not with your hand shaking from the slightest motion, not with all sensation in your fingers gone.

“Physical therapy could,” starts Watson, and trails off even before you can cut her off again. “But that’s not an option, is it.”

“No.” You sound idiotically monosyllabic, you think; but then, all your life comes down to _yes_ and _no_ and whether the other party hears you say it.

Watson, at least, hears you say it.

*

You dream about picking up the phone and hearing eir voice on the other end of the line, broken English and rapid Portuguese, peals of laughter sneaking in.

In your dreams you always answer. In your dreams you don’t question how ey found you, why ey’d still want to speak to you at all; only pick up the phone and say _hello,_ say _I missed you_ , listen to em tell of eir mundane adventures spun into something grand for you.

Waking up from that—

Once, when you were on standby for triage, you watched a man punished by suspension from a hook driven in through the back of his hand. Just when he’d thought the torture of the hook being inserted over, he was allowed to hang, his body weight providing all the torture that was needed; the shock in his bloodless face in that moment stayed with you, even after you were the one that kept him from bleeding out. 

Waking from these dreams reminds you of that exact instant: only it’s you on the hook, and consciousness serves in place of gravity.

On the sixth occasion of waking from it you decide you need this to stop, need something to change; your mind wanders to sharp objects and needles, heroin always did have the side-effect of shutting down the buzz in your brain—

But you’re not that much of a fool, not even now, not even when all you’ve got to your name are the things in your bag and the clothes on your back, hiding in a stranger’s home while your scars and bruises heal. Instead you take the steps up to the roof (you know they’re there because you saw Kitty going up, before—Sherlock keeps bees, she’d said), push open the trapdoor and clamber out. 

The hoodie you slept in is the only thing between you and the cold, and you prefer the bite to comfort, let it sting without so much as grasping your own shoulders.

You don’t expect anyone else on the roof at three A.M. on a winter night, and at first you think it’s empty: but then you see a form on the far side, sitting cross-legged on the ledge that rings the rooftop. You almost go for the knife you still keep on your person, hair-trigger, but the figure calls out, “Law,” and it’s Kitty, _of course_ , just her.

You almost bail back into the house all the same (you haven’t even got your binder on, it’s a struggle to get it on with your arm—) but you can’t bear only going back to foul dreams and aching memories, and so instead you walk over to her, say, “Yeah,” your breath crystalline in the air.

She proffers a box of cigarettes at you, one of her own held briefly between her lips, silent. You can’t think of any reason to refuse.

She holds a light for you—

“Listen,” she says, when you sit carefully on the ledge beside her, and nothing you’ve ever heard that started with _listen_ was something you wanted to hear, “I know it’s none of my business, whatever, you’re just Sherlock’s houseguest, but I just wanted to say. What you’re going through, whatever . . . it sucks. It really fucking sucks, and it sucks double when you don’t have anyone.”

“What I’m going through,” you echo. Inhale deeply, breathe out smoke that rises undisturbed. 

“Yeah,” Kitty says. “Addiction, depression, PTSD, the whole fucking fun bundle,” and you’re glad for the dark because it’s as hard for her to see you as it is for you to see her but you’re looking at her, now, for what might be the first time, seeing the way her silhouette curls inward over the floating ember end of her cigarette, “I’ve, um, I’ve been there. I’m still there. Work in progress.” She sounds like she’s quoting the last.

Thrown, you find your tongue enough to say, “Sherlock took you in. Like he did me?”

“Not exactly,” she says. “More like, he needed a protegée and I needed to get the fuck out of my own skull, and what he teaches, it’s a good distraction. You know. From the noise.” She waves a hand near her head, takes another drag of her cigarette.

You’ve never thought of it as noise. “I must be going deaf, then.”

“Sounds about right,” says Kitty. “The longer you leave it alone the louder it gets, until it’s all you hear.”

You take a drag. At length, staring at the dark shape of your own feet, you say, “Someone hurt you, too.”

“I didn’t make you show me yours,” Kitty warns, and you swallow hard, look down even though you’re sure she can’t see your face. “Unless,” she adds, awkwardly, “unless you want to. Some people say it helps, saying it. I could never really decide if it did, mostly I just—didn’t like how people looked at me, after.” 

A shrug in the dark and you know it’s there anyway, know precisely what she means. Watson, you think, is one of those that looks at you with pity, for all that she pretends otherwise: Sherlock doesn’t, and you think it’s because he’s too much on his mind and too much luggage of his own to ever look at you like that.

“The man I worked for,” you say, very slowly, “he . . .”

But you trail off, and you can’t do it, you can’t, your throat’s gone tight without warning and your cigarette hangs useless in between your fingers _your off hand, your right couldn’t even manage such a simple task,_ you can’t get out the words. 

That he raised you when you were ten and half-alive, the last relic of a city dead and engulfed in flames; that he made you, on his dime; that he broke you, in more ways than one; that he saved your life when you were sick (and what an innocuous little word for what burned through you and settled in your bones); that he ruined you; that he gave you everything you had; that he took everything away; that you spent a life in fear of him, bearing his bruises and his blessings, all of these things are true.

But too abridged, too much and still too little said aloud: you can’t, you _can’t_ , not now. 

You don’t realize you’re shuddering until Kitty’s hand presses open-palm against your shoulder. “Don’t,” she says, “don’t. Just—keep smoking, yeah?”

Smoking proves easier than breathing: your hands shake like you’re a chainsmoker with a tremor but you manage that, force a breath into your lungs together with the inhalation, hate yourself for losing your voice so easily. “Shit,” you gasp, “shit.”

You stay that way for a long time, side-by-side with Kitty, a pack of cigarettes between you; your shaky breathing loud as you send smoke billowing away.

When you’re both finished you’re shaking less and cold enough for your teeth to chatter; and when the stubs have been ground out against the concrete, Kitty says, “Ask Sherlock. I mean, if you need something—against the noise.”

“Okay,” you say, and think you really might.

*


End file.
